28 December 2011

If you're like me, this piece will get your blood boiling. School, an institute for teaching facts, sciences, history, etc is no place for religious teaching. There are churches for that nonsense. One dude from this article says it's no different forcing students to hear about Christ than it is to force Chriters to be taught evolution, which is fucking stupid. After all, I have evidence evolution exists, which is more than I can say for the invisible old fart floating around the clouds with an entourage of winged man servants (and they say God hates gays!) who fathered an illegitimate son that was actually him because a rib woman ate a magic fruit.

Iran and the United States elevated the belligerent tone between them on Wednesday over an Iranian vow to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Middle East waterway for oil tanker traffic, if Western powers attempted to make good on their threat to stifle Iran’s petroleum exports.
Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, Iran’s naval commander, said that “Iran has total control over the strategic waterway,” and that “Closing the Strait of Hormuz is very easy for Iranian naval forces,” in remarks carried by Press TV, an official Iranian news site. Admiral Sayyari, whose forces are in the midst of an ambitious war-games exercise in waters near the Strait of Hormuz, was the second top Iranian official to make such a threat in 24 hours.

Both the Defense Department and the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain and patrols the Strait of Hormuz, responded to Admiral Sayyari’s remarks in statements that suggested American warships would stop the Iranians if necessary.

“The free flow of goods and services through the Strait of Hormuz is vital to regional and global prosperity,” Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the Fifth Fleet command in Manama, Bahrain, said in an emailed response. “Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated.”

The statement also said “The U.S. Navy is a flexible, multi-capable force committed to regional security and stability, always ready to counter malevolent actions to ensure freedom of navigation.”

23 December 2011

Yay! We should all rejoice and celebrate 9/11 as a national holiday for it is the day that our government took a great personal tragedy for the nation and used it as an excuse to dismantle the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, the Republic and real, honest-to-goodness-freedom! We shall hail Bush as the saint of that day and Obama his apostle! You weren't using your freedom anyway America!

Tensions have been growing in the region following international condemnation over Tehran's growing nuclear ambitions.

Last month, Britain's ambassador to Iran was expelled from the country following attacks on the British Embassy. The US is also involved in a standoff over a downed spy drone, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has refused to return despite America's requests.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said that the US military had reached a point where they were ready to execute force against Iran if necessary.

In an interview with US media in Afghanistan he said: "We are examining a range of options. I'm satisfied that the options that we are developing are evolving to a point that they would be executable if necessary."

His comments come just days after Leon Panetta, US secretary of defence, said "no options were off the table" in stopping Iran develop a nuclear weapon.

Gen Dempsey said he had been quietly leading behind the scenes preparations for an attack against Tehran but said a war with the nation would be a "tragedy".

"My biggest worry is that it may miscalculate our resolve. Any miscalculation could mean that we are drawn into conflict and that would be a tragedy for the region and the world," he said.

Asked whether the US military is collecting information on the Middle Eastern nation via spy drones, Gen Dempsey said it would be "imprudent" for them not to attempt to find out what they were doing but stopped short of saying they had used unmanned aircraft.

"If you are asking are we gathering intelligence against Iran in a variety of means, the answer is of course," he said. "It would be imprudent of us not to understand what a nation which has declared itself an adversary of the United States is doing."

Gen Dempsey said the US is collaborating with Israel in its intelligence gathering but reiterated that there are no guarantees the Israelis would inform the US before launching an attack.

"We are trying to establish some confidence on the part of the Israelis that we recognise their concerns and are collaborating with them on addressing them," he said.

Leon Panetta, the secretary of defence, said this week that the US was prepared to step in to prevent Tehran realising its nuclear ambitions. He estimated that the country was only a year away from reaching its goal.

"The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said. "That is a red line for us and that is a red line for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will do it. If they proceed and we get intelligence that they are proceeding in developing a nuclear weapon then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop them. There are no options that are off the table."

If Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon, it could trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East with officials in Saudi Arabia already saying they will look towards developing nuclear capabilities if the Iranians arm themselves.

Further evidence of US reconnaissance missions in the region include the indictment of several alleged CIA spies.

In May this year, Iran's intelligence ministry announced the arrest of 30 CIA "spies" it claimed were conducting sabotage missions.

Another 15 alleged US-Israeli spies were indicted earlier this month and this week Iranian state television showed clips of ex-US Marine Amir Hekmati allegedly confessing to espionage.

Earlier this month, the EU agreed to impose new sanctions against 180 officials in Tehran in an attempt to curtail the nation's nuclear programme. EU foreign ministers also said they were looking at additional measures to impose on Tehran's energy sector.

And here we go again. Iran is no threat to the United States. And who cares if it's a threat to Israel? Last time I checked, Israel wasn't the 51st state! Sure, the Christian knuckleheads in our government care about Israel because of biblical prophecy, but, seriously, should biblical mythology be a basis for real life America foreign policy? If so, then I'm worried about Ragnarok and believe American foreign policy should prepare for an invasion of Frost Giants, trolls and Loki. Yeah, foreign policy based on religious myth is that stupid.

19 December 2011

Nearly one in three people will be arrested by the time they are 23, a study published Monday in Pediatrics found.

"Arrest is a pretty common experience," says Robert Brame, a criminologist at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and principal author of the study.

The new data show a sharp increase from a previous study that stunned the American public when it was published 44 years ago by criminologist Ron Christensen. That study found 22% of youth would be arrested by age 23. The latest study finds 30.2% of young people will be arrested by age 23.

Criminologist Alfred Blumstein says the increase in arrests for young people in the latest study is unsurprising given several decades of tough crime policies.

"I was astonished 44 years ago. Most people were," says Blumstein, a professor of operations research at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University who served with Christensen on President Lyndon Johnson's crime task force.

Now, Blumstein says, youth may be arrested for drugs and domestic violence, which were unlikely offenses to attract police attention in the 1960s. "There's a lot more arresting going on now," he says.

The new study is an analysis of data collected between 1997 and 2008 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The annual surveys conducted over 11 years asked children, teens and young adults between the ages of 8 and 23 whether they had ever been arrested by police or taken into custody for illegal or delinquent offenses.

The question excluded only minor traffic offenses, so youth could have included arrests for a wide variety of offenses such as truancy, vandalism, underage drinking, shoplifting, robbery, assault and murder — any encounter with police perceived as an arrest, Brame says. Some of the incidents perceived and reported by the young people as arrests may not have resulted in criminal charges, he says.

Localities handled many minor offenses more informally 40 years ago than they do now, criminologist Megan Kurlychek says. "Society is a lot less tolerant of these teenage behaviors," she says.

The high rate of arrest among youth is troubling because the records will follow them as adults and make it harder for them to get student loans, jobs and housing, says Kurlychek, an associate professor at University at Albany-SUNY who studies juvenile delinquency. "Arrests have worse consequences than ever for these juveniles," she says. Arrest records "follow you forever. The average teenager who steals an iPod or is arrested for possession of marijuana — why do we make that define their lives?"

13 December 2011

A few years back, I was homeless during the Wintertime. For those
not in the know, Michigan Winters can be exceptionally cold and blustery
and that Winter was no exception. While I was one of the lucky
homeless people who could stay in one of Ann Arbor's few homeless
shelters, many more were not. I didn't find this out until well into
Spring when the Delonis Shelter started kicking folks out as the warm
weather arrived. Having no place to go yet (my situation changed within
the next few months), my friend/acquaintance Caleb, founder of MISSION
(Michigan Itinerant Shelter System Interdependent Out of Necessity) and
Camp Take Notice told me about his tent city behind an Arborland
shopping mall.

The camp has since moved after police and city
harassment drove them to the Western outskirts of the supposedly
"liberal" Ann Arbor where it has taken bloom and currently boasts a
homeless population of 50+ residents, all in tents with the harhser
aspects of Winter coming all too soon for these struggling, though
stalwart, individuals.

With the holidays upon us I figured now was
the time to post their website info so that maybe, just maybe, some
generous folks on Tumblr, Facebook, etc. will make donations or
contributions to this worthy cause. It really does a lot of good. I
know because I bear witness to that fact.

The protesters– maybe a 100 or so– had gathered in the center of the floor and were dancing and chanting, “Occupy Brookfield!” A long line of police began to form in the periphery, and John and the other media people dispersed to take pictures. As the police formed an outer circle to surround the large group, the crowd began to disperse. Many of the protestors headed up the marble staircase away from the cops, and a small group bolted up a nearby escalator.

That was when everything escalated completely out of control. The escalator was stopped. Suddenly, the outer circle of cops was swarming in and violently pushing people away. John had been standing near the crowd, taking video. I was about twenty feet from him, and when I looked back in his direction, I saw his blue hood on the ground. I ran towards him and slid to the ground, leaning in between people’s knees to take pictures. John was face down on the ground being handcuffed, his glasses flung across the floor and people screaming, “Stop, stop, he didn’t do anything!”

A cop pulled me up by my shoulders and told me to step back. I said, “He’s my brother.” Several cops pushed me away as I asked, “What is he being arrested for? He was taking pictures.” A cop said, “He didn’t produce an official press pass, so that means he was resisting arrest.” I quite literally didn’t understand, so I said, “What?” At that point, the same cop said, “If you don’t step back immediately, you will be arrested too.”

I was pushed behind a line of police. I stood there, several inches from them, and heard myself saying, “Why are you doing this?”

A protester next to me was yelling at the cops, something about free speech or unnecessary force or any number of logical things to say at a time like this, I was too distracted to pay attention. But then, an officer said to him, “Get out of my face. I have a gun, and I don’t need people up in my face like this.”

A former official from within the ranks of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is reporting that US and NATO forces have landed outside of Syria and are training militants to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, formerly a translator with the FBI, wrote over the weekend that American soldiers are among the NATO troops that have mysteriously and suddenly landed on the Jordanian and Syrian border. According to her, several sources internationally have confirmed the news, although the US media has been instructed to temporarily censor itself from reporting the news.

Additionally, Edmonds says that American and NATO forces are training Turkish troops as well, to possibly launch a strike from the north of Syria.

Edmonds writes that an Iraqi journalist based out of London has confirmed that US forces that vacated the Ain al-Assad Air Base in Iraq last week did in fact leave the country as part of President Obama’s drawdown of troops, but rather than return home, the soldiers were transferred into Jordan during the late hours of Thursday evening. Another source, writes Edmonds, informs her that “soldiers who speak languages other than Arabic” have been moving through Jordan mere miles from the country’s border with Syria. Troops believed to be NATO/American-affiliated have been spotted between the King Hussein Air Base in al-Mafraq and the Jordanian village of Albaej and its vicinity.

Nizar Nayouf, a correspondent for Edmond’s Boiling Frog Post whistleblower site, says an employee of the London-based offices of Royal Jordanian Airlines has further confirmed that at least one US aircraft transporting military personnel has brought American troops into Jordan in recent days. Nayouf, the former editor-in-chief of Sawt al-Democratiyya (Democracy's Vote), had previously been sentenced to a decade behind bars for critiquing the Syrian government. He later won several human rights awards and the 2000 UNISCO prize for press freedom.

Since the uprising of rebel forces opposing al-Assad’s regime over Syria nearly a year ago, American officials have been critical of the country’s government but insist that they have otherwise distanced themselves from becoming involved in the protests. Following the deaths of dozens of protesters in the spring of 2011, the United States imposed strict sanctions against the official government of Syria.

Navi Pillay, the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, revealed this week that the uprising in Syria has caused over 5,000 deaths since it began in early 2011. In the case of the crackdown against former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, NATO involvement began only one month into the uprising. Nine months later, the total death toll of the Libyan Civil War is estimated to be close to 30,000.

In her report, Edmonds says that NATO troops have been training soldiers just outside of Syria since as early as May, and that US media is prohibited from reporting on it until today. The Turkish paper Milliyet also reports that defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad is preparing troops to take over the Syrian government as well.

Bonus bonus fun fact: Newt recently signed the Marriage Pledge which, unbeknownst to Earth scientists, is so hypocritical, that it has torn a hole in the space time continuum and threatens to devour our planet.

In February of last year, video surfaced of a marijuana raid in Columbia, Mo. During the raid on Jonathan Whitworth and his family, police took down the door with a battering ram, then within seconds shot and killed one of Whitworth's dogs and wounded the other. They didn't find enough pot in the house to charge Whitworth with even a misdemeanor. (He was, however, charged with misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia when police found a pipe.) The disturbing video went viral in May 2010, triggering outrage around the world. On Fox News, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer and Bill O'Reilly cautioned not to judge the entire drug war by the video, which they characterized as an isolated incident.

In fact, very little about the raid that was isolated or unusual. For the most part, it was carried out the same way drug warrants are served some 150 times per day in the United States. The battering ram, the execution of Whitworth's dog, the fact that police weren't aware Whitworth's 7-year-old child was in the home before they riddled the place with bullets, the fact that they found only a small amount of pot, likely for personal use -- all are common in drug raids. The only thing unusual was that the raid was recorded by police, then released to the public after an open records request by the Columbia Daily Tribune. It was as if much of the country was seeing for the first time the violence with which the drug war is actually fought. And they didn't like what they saw.

That video came to mind with the outrage and public debate over the now-infamous pepper-spraying of Occupy protesters at the University of California-Davis protest earlier this month. The incident was just one of a number of high-profile uses of force amid crackdowns on Occupy protesters across the country, including one in Oakland in which the skull of Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen was fractured by a tear gas canister, and in New York, where NYPD Officer Anthony Bologna pepper-sprayed protesters who had been penned in by police fencing.

But America's police departments have been moving toward more aggressive, force-first, militaristic tactics and their accompanying mindset for 30 years. It's just that, with the exception of protests at the occasional free trade or World Bank summit, the tactics haven't generally been used on mostly white, mostly college-educated kids armed with cellphone cameras and a media platform....

The article, much too long to reprint here, is a sobering one. Follow the link to continue reading about how your rights and freedoms are being trampled into dust by the government.

Fox was forced to acknowledge the 8.6% unemployment rate, but they still managed to do a little ‘fancy accounting’ in the graphic. Notice how 8.6% is the same height as 9%, and 8.8% is actually less than November’s 8.6%. Proving, yet again, that if you watch Fox for news, you are a freaking clueless idiot moron.

12 December 2011

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.
Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.
He also called in a Predator B drone.
As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.
But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.
Read more at the link. Welcome to Soviet America.

There’s some disturbing rhetoric flying around in the debate over the National Defense Authorization Act, which among other things contains passages that a) officially codify the already-accepted practice of indefinite detention of "terrorist" suspects, and b) transfer the responsibility for such detentions exclusively to the military.

The fact that there’s been only some muted public uproar about this provision (which, disturbingly enough, is the creature of Wall Street anti-corruption good guy Carl Levin, along with John McCain) is mildly surprising, given what’s been going on with the Occupy movement. Protesters in fact should be keenly interested in the potential applications of this provision, which essentially gives the executive branch unlimited powers to indefinitely detain terror suspects without trial.

The really galling thing is that this act specifically envisions American citizens falling under the authority of the bill. One of its supporters, the dependably-unlikeable Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, bragged that the law "basically says … for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield" and that people can be jailed without trial, be they "American citizen or not." New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte reiterated that "America is part of the battlefield."

Officially speaking, of course, the bill only pertains to:

"... a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners."

As Glenn Greenwald notes, the key passages here are "substantially supported" and "associated forces." The Obama administration and various courts have already expanded their definition of terrorism to include groups with no connection to 9/11 (i.e. certain belligerents in Yemen and Somalia) and to individuals who are not members of the target terror groups, but merely provided "substantial support."

The definitions, then, are, for the authorities, conveniently fungible. They may use indefinite detention against anyone who "substantially supports" terror against the United States, and it looks an awful lot like they have leeway in defining not only what constitutes "substantial" and "support," but even what "terror" is. Is a terrorist under this law necessarily a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban? Or is it merely someone who is "engaged in hostilities against the United States"?

Here’s where I think we’re in very dangerous territory. We have two very different but similarly large protest movements going on right now in the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement. What if one of them is linked to a violent act? What if a bomb goes off in a police station in Oakland, or an IRS office in Texas? What if the FBI then linked those acts to Occupy or the Tea Party?

You can see where this is going. When protesters on the left first started flipping out about George Bush’s indefinite detention and rendition policies, most people thought the idea that these practices might someday be used against ordinary Americans was merely an academic concern, something theoretical.

But it’s real now. If these laws are passed, we would be forced to rely upon the discretion of a demonstrably corrupt and consistently idiotic government to not use these awful powers to strike back at legitimate domestic unrest.

Right now, the Senate is openly taking aim at the rights of American citizens under the guise of an argument that anyone who supports al-Qaeda has no rights. But if you pay close attention, you’ll notice the law’s supporters here and there conveniently leaving out those caveats about "anyone who supports al-Qaeda." For instance, here’s Lindsey Graham again:

"If you’re an American citizen and you betray your country, you’re not going to be given a lawyer ... I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys at home or abroad."

As Greenwald points out, this idea – that an American who commits treason can be detained without due process – is in direct defiance of Article III, Section III of the Constitution, which reads:

"No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

This effort to eat away at the rights of the accused was originally gradual, but to me it looks like that process is accelerating. It began in the Bush years with a nebulous description of terrorist sedition that may or may not have included links to Sunni extremist groups in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But words like "associated" and "substantial" and "betray" have crept into the discussion, and now it feels like the definition of a terrorist is anyone who crosses some sort of steadily-advancing invisible line in their opposition to the current government.

This confusion about the definition of terrorism comes at a time when the economy is terrible, the domestic government is more unpopular than ever, and there is quite a lot of radical and even revolutionary political agitation going on right here at home. There are people out there – I’ve met some of them, in both the Occupy and Tea Party movements – who think that the entire American political system needs to be overthrown, or at least reconfigured, in order for progress to be made.

It sounds paranoid and nuts to think that those people might be arrested and whisked away to indefinite, lawyerless detention by the military, but remember: This isn’t about what’s logical, it’s about what’s going on in the brains of people like Lindsey Graham and John McCain.

At what point do those luminaries start equating al-Qaeda supporters with, say, radical anti-capitalists in the Occupy movement? What exactly is the difference between such groups in the minds (excuse me, in what passes for the minds) of the people who run this country?

That difference seems to be getting smaller and smaller all the time, and such niceties as American citizenship and the legal tradition of due process seem to be less and less meaningful to the people who run things in America.

What does seem real to them is this “battlefield earth” vision of the world, in which they are behind one set of lines and an increasingly enormous group of other people is on the other side.

Here’s another way to ask the question: On which side of the societal fence do you think the McCains and Grahams would put, say, an unemployed American plumber who refused an eviction order from Bank of America and holed up with his family in his Florida house, refusing to move? Would Graham/McCain consider that person to have the same rights as Lloyd Blankfein, or is that plumber closer, in their eyes, to being like the young Muslim who throws a rock at a U.S. embassy in Yemen?

A few years ago, that would have sounded like a hysterical question. But it just doesn’t seem that crazy anymore. We’re turning into a kind of sci-fi society in which making it and being a success not only means getting rich, but also means winning the full rights of citizenship. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see this ending well.

Ben Wizner, the litigation director for the ACLU's national security project, cheerfully admits that its April 2011 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for 23 of the very same US State Department diplomatic cables we all read this time last year, when WikiLeaks released them to five newspapers including the Guardian, was "cheeky" – a way to foreground the "absurdity of the US secrecy regime".

And so it has. Nearly eight months after the original FOIA request, the State Department has finally released … 11 cables. Federal censors have helpfully redacted them, making it easy to see, by a simple act of comparison (which the ACLU performs for us, here), precisely which sections the State Department wants hidden. Missing are a dirty dozen cables the government refused to release – despite those cables having already been leaked, published and analysed in virtually every major national and international media venue – again, because they were classified as secret or deemed to contain sensitive information.

Administration officials unleashed plenty of hyperbole and hysteria when the cables were first published. But it turned out that none of the information in them actually endangered American citizens, allies or informants. They did, however, prove embarrassing for the US and many foreign leaders. Because it turned out that claims about national security were often an excuse to prevent us from seeing our government engaged in unethical, unconstitutional and, sometimes, illegal practices. These ran the gamut from extraordinary renditions, detentions and torture to shaking down other governments in an attempt to influence their political processes and tamper with their criminal justice systems.

We learned about the US attempt to scuttle the case of German citizen Khaled el-Masri, the greengrocer mistaken for a senior al-Qaida official. He was kidnapped, tortured, drugged, beaten and thrown into Afghanistan's CIA-run Salt Pit prison, until – oops – they realised they had the wrong guy and dumped him in the Albanian outback. In public, Munich prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 suspected CIA operatives involved in his abduction and torture, and Angela Merkel's office called for an investigation. In private, the German justice ministry and foreign ministry both made it clear to the US that they were not interested in pursuing the case, emboldening the US to refuse to arrest or hand over the agents.

When the ACLU challenged the CIA on behalf of el-Masri in 2005, a judge dismissed the case. The US government did not deny that he was wrongfully kidnapped. Instead, it successfully argued that his case be dismissed because litigation of his claims would expose state secrets and jeopardise American security. This despite the fact that, as el-Masri pointed out, "President Bush has told the world about the CIA's detention program, and even though my allegations have been corroborated by eyewitnesses and other evidence."

First the Bush administration and then the Obama administration successfully evoked the state secrets privilege to prevent the ACLU from filing a federal lawsuit against Jeppesen DataPlan, Inc, the folks who helped the CIA fly extraordinary rendition victims to secret sites where they were detained, tortured and interrogated. Again, the government claimed that further litigation would undermine national security interests, even though much of the evidence needed to try the case was already available to the public. And again, it appears to have won.

In the hall of mirrors that the US security regime has become, information that is not officially acknowledged cannot be used to hold government officials responsible in the courts. And an administration that can evade charges of misconduct, including torture, by hiding behind state secrets claims, even when all the details are publicly known, becomes the guardian of its own liability. That's bad news.

Transparency and accountability are the oxygen of democracy. But don't hold your breath waiting for this administration to respond to requests for either one.

“If these laws are passed, we would be forced to
rely upon the discretion of a demonstrably corrupt and consistently
idiotic government to not use these awful powers to strike back at
legitimate domestic unrest.”

Congress removed wolves in Montana and Idaho from the protection of the Endangered Species Act in April. And this fall, the killing began.
As of Wednesday, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game reported that 154 of its estimated 750 wolves had been "harvested" this year. Legal hunting and trapping — with both snares to strangle and leg traps to capture — will continue through the spring. And if hunting fails to reduce the wolf population sufficiently — to less than 150 wolves — the state says it will use airborne shooters to eliminate more.
In Montana, hunters will be allowed to kill up to 220 wolves this season (or about 40% of the state's roughly 550 wolves). To date, hunters have taken only about 100 wolves, prompting the state to extend the hunting season until the end of January. David Allen, president of the powerful Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, has said he thinks hunters can't do the job, and he is urging the state to follow Idaho's lead and "prepare for more aggressive wolf control methods, perhaps as early as summer 2012."
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead recently concluded an agreement with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to save 100 to 150 wolves in lands near Yellowstone National Park. But in the remaining 80% of the state, wolves can be killed year-round because they are considered vermin. Roughly 60% of Wyoming's 350 wolves will become targeted for elimination.
What is happening to wolves now, and what is planned for them, doesn't really qualify as hunting. It is an outright war.
In the mid-1990s, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released 66 wolves in Yellowstone and central Idaho, most of the U.S. celebrated. The magnificent wolf, an icon of wilderness that humans had driven to extinction in the United States, would now reoccupy part of its old range. But in the region where the wolves were introduced, the move was much more controversial.
Part of the reason was the increase, particularly in Idaho and Montana, in paramilitary militia advocates, with their masculine ideal of man as warrior who should fight the hated federal government, by armed force if necessary. They were outraged by what they saw as federal interference in the region spurred by environmentalists, and their ideas found a willing reception among ranchers, who view wolves as a threat to their livestock — even though they ranch on federal land — and hunters, who don't want the wolves reducing the big game population.
The factions have reinforced one another, and today a cultural mythology has emerged that demonizes the federal government, the environmental movement and the wolves themselves. Many false claims have been embraced as truth, including that the Fish and Wildlife Service stole $60 million from federal excise taxes on guns and ammunition to pay for bringing wolves back; that the introduced wolves carry horrible tapeworms that can be easily transmitted to dogs, and ultimately to humans; that the Canadian wolves that were brought in are an entirely different species from the gray wolves that once lived in the Rockies, and that these wolves will kill elk, deer, livestock — even humans — for sport.
The false claims may have had particular resonance because they built on a long tradition in Western culture. During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church ruled that wolves belonged to the devil: Demons could take the shape of wolves, as could witches. Puritans brought similar ideas to America. Cotton Mather called New England before it was settled a "howling wilderness." Asked to investigate Salem's alleged witches, Mather concluded in his book, "On Witchcraft" (1692): "Evening wolves" (werewolves and witches) were but another of the devil's tests as New England passed from "wilderness" to the "promised land."
And that attitude has persisted. Gary Marbut, president of the influential Montana Shooting Sports Assn., wrote in 2003 that "one might reasonably view man's entire development and creation of civilization as a process of fortifying against wolves."
Politicians from both parties in Western states have been eager to help with the fortifications. In Idaho, Republican Rep. Mike Simpson and the state's governor, Butch Otter, made removal of wolves from the Endangered Species Act a political priority. In Montana, Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg has made delisting wolves central to his 2012 Senate campaign against Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. In April, Tester in turn persuaded fellow Democrats in the Senate to approve his inserting a rider in a budget bill that delisted wolves.
In early November, Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, made his own political contribution. Thrilled at the testing of a drone aircraft manufactured in Montana, Baucus declared: "Our troops rely on this type of technology every day, and there is an enormous future potential in border security, agriculture and wildlife and predator management." A manufacturer's representative claimed his company's drone "can tell the difference between a wolf and a coyote." Pilotless drone aircraft used by the CIA and the Air Force to target and kill alleged terrorists now appear to be real options to track and kill "enemy" wolves.
How far we have fallen since the mid-1990s, when we celebrated the wolves' reintroduction. During the 2008 presidential election, candidate Barack Obama declared: "Federal policy toward animals should respect the dignity of animals and their rightful place as cohabitants of the environment. We should strive to protect animals and their habitats and prevent animal cruelty, exploitation and neglect."
The president now should make good on that promise.
Personally, I believe that man needs to co-exist with nature, not slaughter it. Unfortunately, my fellow primates aren't all that enlightened.

This image (sorry about the quality; it was the best I could find) was posted by a KS Tea party group. It was taken down after it caused an understandable uproar. The right can deny it is racist all it likes, but the evidence just keeps piling up.

11 December 2011

The largest civil rights group in America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is petitioning the UN over what it sees as a concerted efforted to disenfranchise black and Latino voters ahead of next year's presidential election.

The organisation will this week present evidence to the UN high commissioner on human rights of what it contends is a conscious attempt to "block the vote" on the part of state legislatures across the US. Next March the NAACP will send a delegation of legal experts to Geneva to enlist the support of the UN human rights council.

The NAACP contends that the America in the throes of a consciously conceived and orchestrated move to strip black and other ethnic minority groups of the right to vote. William Barber, a member of the association's national board, said it was the "most vicious, co-ordinated and sinister attack to narrow participation in our democracy since the early 20th century".

Fourteen states have passed a total of 25 measures that will unfairly restrict the right to vote, among black and Hispanic voters in particular.

The new measures are focused – not coincidentally, the association insists – in states with the fastest growing black populations (Florida, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina) and Latino populations (South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee). The NAACP sees this as a cynical backlash to a surge in ethnic minority voting evident in 2008.

In that year, black and Hispanic voters turned out in record numbers, partly in a wave of enthusiasm for Barack Obama. More than 2 million extra black voters turned out over 2004, an increase of 15%.

Among Hispanics, the upturn was even more pronounced. Two million additional voters attended the polls – a rise of 28% on the previous presidential election.

The scale of the assault on voting rights is substantial, according to experts on electoral law. The Brennan Center for Justice, based at New York University law school, estimates that the new measures could bar as many as 5 million eligible voters from taking part in choosing the occupant of the White House next year.

The 14 states that have embarked on such measures hold two-thirds of the electoral college votes needed to win the presidency. Put another way, of the 12 battleground states that will determine the outcome of the presidential race, five have already cut back on voting rights and two more are in discussions about following suit.

Ethnic minority groups are not the only sections of society at risk of losing their voting rights. The Brennan Center warns that young voters and students, older voters and poor income groups are also vulnerable.

The NAACP says voting rights are being whittled down at every stage of the electoral process. First of all, the registration of new voters is being impeded in several states by moves to block voter registration drives that have historically proved to be an important way of bringing black and Hispanic people to the poll.

Four states – Florida, Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia – continue to withhold the vote from anyone convicted of a criminal offence. In Florida, offenders who have completed their sentences have to wait at least five years before they can even apply to restore their right to register to vote.

Across the US, more than 5 million Americans are denied the right to vote on grounds that they were convicted of a felony, 4 million of whom have fully completed their sentence and almost half of whom are black or Hispanic.

Other measures have reduced the ease of early voting, a convenience that is disproportionately heavily used by African-Americans. Even more importantly, 34 states have introduced a requirement that voters carry photo ID cards on the day of the election itself.

Studies have showed that the proportion of voters who do not have access to valid photo ID cards is much higher among older African-Americans because they were not given birth certificates in the days of segregation. Students and young voters also often lack identification and are thus in danger of being stripped of their right to vote.

In Texas, a law has been passed that prevents students from voting on the basis of their college ID cards, while allowing anyone to cast their ballot if they can show a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

Benjamin Jealous, the NAACP's president, said the moves amounted to "a massive attempt at state-sponsored voter suppression." He added that the association will be urging the UN "to look at what is a co-ordinated campaign to disenfranchise persons of colour."

I was obsessed with politics in the '80s. I've recovered and I'm feeling much better now thank you.

By the time I realized, as interesting as it was, I'd better stop this stuff and try to earn a living, I had discovered many of our social problems and quality of life issues could be traced to the same political source: our corrupt-by-definition electoral system. The solution to the problem was as easy to discover as the cause: The elimination of all private finance in the electoral process.

I was working doing most of my research in the area of our foreign policy since WWll, whatever fell under the umbrella of international liberation politics, but I examined and analyzed a fair amount of local issues as well.

I wanted to know how things work? Where's the power? Who's pulling the strings?

The economy of the world came down to the unholy trinity of guns, drugs and gasoline -- military industry, drugs (legal and illegal), and energy -- and now I would add agribusiness as the fourth controlling commodity, and always with the enabling bankers never too far out of sight making their profits far too often from wars and slave labor.

While that readily explained the suffering of the Third World, it didn't immediately answer why in America it was possible for so many people to be unhappy with our government's decisions, both foreign and domestic, when we're supposedly living in a democracy.

A quick analysis of our electoral process revealed the obvious answer. The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.

The corporation has but one obligation, which is to increase profits for it's shareholders by any legal means necessary by the next fiscal quarter.

They have no moral, patriotic, social, environmental, generational or even sustainable responsibility. They have only a short-term economic mandate and their only responsibility to society is to stay within the law to accomplish it.

This doesn't mean corporations shouldn't exist or even that their directors are evil by their very DNA. It has been a legally acceptable basic flaw in the form of our capitalist system that allows corporations to operate without a moral compass or obligation to society -- but that's a discussion for another day.

The law is rarely a problem because the corporations' legal obligations are pretty much designed first and foremost for their maximum profit by the legislation created by the legislators belonging to our two national political parties, both of which are wholly bought, sold and controlled by Wall Street. The banks and the corporations. In other words the game is rigged. Feel like a sucker? We all do because we all are.

The manipulation, aided by a very willing media also owned by the corporations, has made things easier beginning with what has become the amazing Orwellian staple of every newscast, selling the public on the lie that the Dow has somehow become America's scoreboard!

We're all hypnotized, rooting for them like they're our home team at a football game, cheering for THEIR scoreboard mindlessly forgetting WE'RE THE AWAY TEAM!!

You think your congressman is working all day to get you a job? He may want to. He or she is probably not a bad person. They probably want to do the right thing. But they can't. Long-time Capitol Hill staff and campaign strategists tell me the average legislator spends one-third of their time (or more) every day raising money or on activities related to raising money.

Yes, they are "elected" which creates the mass delusion of democracy to keep the masses from rioting, but congressional races are costing millions of dollars and some Senate seats are going for tens of millions each, and they're predicting well over one billion dollars for the next presidency.

That's some democracy we've created there, isn't it?

Of the people?

By the people?

For the people?

What people?

Democracy in America is a sick joke and the masses aren't laughing anymore.

Yes, we can demonstrate. We can march. We can write and sign petitions to our Representatives. We can occupy.

And we should because it's healthy to vent, and we don't feel so all alone. But the truth is, other than the value of venting, we're wasting our time. It is naïve to expect political results from any of these activities.

Our representative can give us lip service. A lot of sympathy. Empathy even. But we don't pay their media bills, gabeesh?

We need to eliminate all private finance from the electoral process.

And let's not be distracted by "reforms." Let's spare ourselves the unnecessary discussions about transparent disclosure, or the conflict of interest of foreign countries buying favorable treatment, or protection after protection being gutted by dangerously diluted regulations, or trying to impose this limit or that limit, etc., etc., etc.

Campaign finance doesn't need reform. It needs elimination.

To accomplish this we must overturn Buckley v. Valeo, one of the two or three worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.

The ruling makes the extraordinary decision that money is protected by the First Amendment.

Presumably Chief Justice Gordon Gekko presiding!

These smartest guys in the room actually decided that spending money is the equivalent of free speech. You might wonder why no one in that smart room stood up and said wait a minute, if money is speech, isn't lack of money lack of speech?

You know, as in the rich get to talk, and the poor don't? How are the non-moneyed classes represented by this decision?

I guess nobody stood up then, but it's time to stand up now.

In fact, I am now introducing a new pledge to be signed by our legislators. Of both parties. Indies too. Everybody's welcome.

THE PLEDGE FOR A DEMOCRATIC AMERICA

(We'll need someone more educated than me to draw it up, or we can copy Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge, but it would go something like this.)

I, The Undersigned, pledge to overturn Buckley v. Valeo and eliminate all private finance from the electoral process, thusly restoring America to it's democratic principles. I may take corporate, PAC, SuperPAC, or Chinese money to get elected or reelected (martyrdom accomplishes nothing), but upon my election I will make campaign finance elimination one of my immediate top priorities.

Now somebody should be starting a new Third Party whose platform is dedicated to this one idea. Twenty-five years ago that's what I'd be doing right now.

But the need for a Third Party aside, this idea applies for everyone. Just as much for the Tea Party on the right as the 99 Percenters on the left (the corporate oligarchy actually has no Party affiliation, it just looks Republican).

Both groups should adopt this issue. The Occupiers need not agree on anything else, because frankly nothing else matters, and a bit more focus on the root of our problems for the Tea Party certainly wouldn't hurt them either.

Let's see who's serious about representing the "people."

And you know what?

We might be pleasantly surprised at how many congressmen and senators sign this thing who would rather be doing something more dignified with their lives than spending half their time begging for money.

Santorum told the group he would cut the food stamp program, describing it as one of the fastest growing programs in Washington, D.C.

Forty-eight million people are on food stamps in a country with 300-million people, said Santorum.

“If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?” Santorum asked.

The cost of the food stamp program — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — has jumped because more Americans are out of work and wages are down, not because of obesity rates. Recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that nearly “70 percent households that relied on food stamps last year had no earned income,” although many households did benefit from Social Security benefits and other government programs. But a whopping 20 percent of households had no cash income at all last year.

Food prices have also gone up, adding additional costs. In fact, the food stamp program has been critical for reducing poverty and pumping money into local economies during the down economy, so cutting it now would not only take food out of peoples’ mouths (regardless of whether they are obese or not) and could slow down the recovery.

Apparently only poor folks are fat. Santorum proves he enjoys hanging around the asshole.

Many civil liberties advocates fear it might be. They’re worried about a provision tucked into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, approved by the Senate last week, that would allow the military to detain without a trial any American citizen accused of being a terrorist, or of supporting terrorists who plot attacks against the United States. The ACLU called the proposal “an extreme position that will forever change our country.”

The indefinite detention provision is just one of many trends in policing and law enforcement that have civil liberties advocates alarmed. New external threats, as well as technological advancements, are posing new challenges to our Constitutional rights, advocates say. Policymakers are debating those issues in Congress and in the courts right now, and the decisions they make could have fundamental consequences for what it means to be an American.

Here are five issues that are especially worrisome to civil liberties watchdogs:

1. Indefinite military detentions of U.S. citizens

The provision, part of the bill that authorizes Pentagon spending for 2012, was drafted by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and has bipartisan support in the Senate. The thinking, according to supporters, is that “America is part of the battlefield” in the so-called war on terror, as Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire put it, so Americans should be fair game when it comes to finding and arresting terrorists.

The bill, however, takes the power to arrest and detain terrorists away from law enforcement officials, like the police or FBI, and gives it to the military, which, under the law, would have the power to imprison an American who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” indefinitely, “without trial until the end of the hostilities.” And those hostilities aren’t likely to “end” any time soon, since the law that authorizes the use of military force against terrorists has no expiration date.

At a national security conference last week, the lawyers for the Obama administration, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson, said American citizens are legitimate targets for killing when they take up arms against the U.S., according to the Associated Press. Jameel Jaffer, a deputy legal director for the ACLU, said in an interview in September that the targeted killing program sets up a precedent in which “U.S. citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government.”

3. Arresting witnesses for recording police actions

The raids at Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country have earned media attention primarily for their glaring instances of police brutality. But they’ve also tested the boundaries of police authority when it comes to limiting media access to police operations. As many as 30 journalists have been arrested covering Occupy protests, including many who clearly identified themselves as credentialed members of the media. Officials in New York and L.A., for example, have also tried to tightly restrict media access to the Occupy encampments, setting up barricades far away from the actual raids and allowing only hand-picked journalists to go behind police lines.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule soon on a case that could have far-reaching consequences for privacy in the 21st Century. The justices were asked to decide whether the police could use GPS devices to track people suspected of crimes without first obtaining a warrant. Police across the country use GPS devices to track the movements of thousands of criminal suspects every year, but critics say the practice violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

In oral arguments in November, several justices expressed concern that, as technology improves, the power to track a U.S. citizens’ every move would only become more dangerous. “If you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States,” Justice Stephen Breyer told the lawyer for the Justice Department, which is defending warrantless GPS tracking. That, Breyer added, “sounds like ’1984.’”

5. Surveillance drones spying on American soil

The use of drones to spy on states like Pakistan and Iran has become so popular in national security circles that many domestic law enforcement agencies are now considering using these spy planes to conduct covert surveillance on American soil. Drones are already used to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, but now many police officials across the country are advocating for the use of drones in other types of police actions, like hunting fugitives, finding missing children and monitoring protest movements.

These drones, advocates note, can not only monitor large urban expanses, they can also use artificial intelligence “seek out and record certain types of suspicious behavior,” whatever that may be. The Orlando police, for example, initially requested two spy drones to help police the Republican National Convention next year, before changing their minds for budgetary reasons. Some police officials have even openly discussed arming the spy planes with “non-lethal weapons” like Tasers or bean bag guns.

These drones, and other tactics imported from battlefield to American soil, are an example of how the “war on terror” has threatened core protections guaranteed to American citizens by the Constitution, civil liberties advocates say. The erosion of these protections has been supported by both Democrats and Republicans alike. And, as the ACLU put it, the debate over these tactics “goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans.”

Many civil liberties advocates fear it might be. They’re worried about a provision tucked into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, approved by the Senate last week, that would allow the military to detain without a trial any American citizen accused of being a terrorist, or of supporting terrorists who plot attacks against the United States. The ACLU called the proposal “an extreme position that will forever change our country.”

The indefinite detention provision is just one of many trends in policing and law enforcement that have civil liberties advocates alarmed. New external threats, as well as technological advancements, are posing new challenges to our Constitutional rights, advocates say. Policymakers are debating those issues in Congress and in the courts right now, and the decisions they make could have fundamental consequences for what it means to be an American.

Here are five issues that are especially worrisome to civil liberties watchdogs:

1. Indefinite military detentions of U.S. citizens

The provision, part of the bill that authorizes Pentagon spending for 2012, was drafted by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and has bipartisan support in the Senate. The thinking, according to supporters, is that “America is part of the battlefield” in the so-called war on terror, as Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire put it, so Americans should be fair game when it comes to finding and arresting terrorists.

The bill, however, takes the power to arrest and detain terrorists away from law enforcement officials, like the police or FBI, and gives it to the military, which, under the law, would have the power to imprison an American who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” indefinitely, “without trial until the end of the hostilities.” And those hostilities aren’t likely to “end” any time soon, since the law that authorizes the use of military force against terrorists has no expiration date.

At a national security conference last week, the lawyers for the Obama administration, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson, said American citizens are legitimate targets for killing when they take up arms against the U.S., according to the Associated Press. Jameel Jaffer, a deputy legal director for the ACLU, said in an interview in September that the targeted killing program sets up a precedent in which “U.S. citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government.”

3. Arresting witnesses for recording police actions

The raids at Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country have earned media attention primarily for their glaring instances of police brutality. But they’ve also tested the boundaries of police authority when it comes to limiting media access to police operations. As many as 30 journalists have been arrested covering Occupy protests, including many who clearly identified themselves as credentialed members of the media. Officials in New York and L.A., for example, have also tried to tightly restrict media access to the Occupy encampments, setting up barricades far away from the actual raids and allowing only hand-picked journalists to go behind police lines.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule soon on a case that could have far-reaching consequences for privacy in the 21st Century. The justices were asked to decide whether the police could use GPS devices to track people suspected of crimes without first obtaining a warrant. Police across the country use GPS devices to track the movements of thousands of criminal suspects every year, but critics say the practice violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

In oral arguments in November, several justices expressed concern that, as technology improves, the power to track a U.S. citizens’ every move would only become more dangerous. “If you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States,” Justice Stephen Breyer told the lawyer for the Justice Department, which is defending warrantless GPS tracking. That, Breyer added, “sounds like ’1984.’”

5. Surveillance drones spying on American soil

The use of drones to spy on states like Pakistan and Iran has become so popular in national security circles that many domestic law enforcement agencies are now considering using these spy planes to conduct covert surveillance on American soil. Drones are already used to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, but now many police officials across the country are advocating for the use of drones in other types of police actions, like hunting fugitives, finding missing children and monitoring protest movements.

These drones, advocates note, can not only monitor large urban expanses, they can also use artificial intelligence “seek out and record certain types of suspicious behavior,” whatever that may be. The Orlando police, for example, initially requested two spy drones to help police the Republican National Convention next year, before changing their minds for budgetary reasons. Some police officials have even openly discussed arming the spy planes with “non-lethal weapons” like Tasers or bean bag guns.

These drones, and other tactics imported from battlefield to American soil, are an example of how the “war on terror” has threatened core protections guaranteed to American citizens by the Constitution, civil liberties advocates say. The erosion of these protections has been supported by both Democrats and Republicans alike. And, as the ACLU put it, the debate over these tactics “goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans.”

"All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined… could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." – Abraham Lincoln, 1838

America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued for the past ten years, has forever altered the political and legal landscape of our country. It has chipped away at our freedoms and is unraveling our Constitution. Even now, with Osama bin Laden having been killed and al-Qaeda dismantled by a series of high-profile assassinations, the war hawks continue to rattle their sabers. Yet while more and more Americans join the call for a de-escalation of military actions abroad, those clamoring for war have turned their focus inwards. As Senator Lindsay Graham recently remarked as an explanation for his support of legislation allowing for the indefinite detention of Americans, "Is the homeland the battlefield? You better believe it is the battlefield."

America has indeed become the new battleground in the war on terror. In light of this, you can rest assured that there will be no restoration of the civil liberties jeopardized by the USA Patriot Act and other equally subversive legislation. Instead, those in power will continue to sanction ongoing violations of our rights, relying on bureaucratic legalese to sidestep any concerns that might be raised. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which was passed by the Senate with a vote of 93-7, is a perfect example of this. Contained within this massive defense bill is a provision crafted by Democrat Carl Levin and Republican John McCain which mandates that anyone suspected of terrorism against the United States be held in military custody indefinitely. This provision extends to American citizens on American territory. The bill also renews the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) which was passed in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks. In addition to renewing the AUMF, it extends its provisions to include military action against those who "substantially support" al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or "associated forces." And to cap it off, the bill enhances restrictions against transferring detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay to the continental United States.

Taken collectively, these provisions re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the rule of law — our U.S. Constitution, becomes the map by which we navigate life in the United States. In short, this defense bill not only decimates the due process of law and habeas corpus for anyone perceived to be an enemy of the United States, but it radically expands the definition of who may be considered the legitimate target of military action. If signed into law by President Obama, this bill will not only ensure that we remain in a perpetual state of war — with this being a war against the American people — but it will also institute de facto martial law in the United States. Although the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act placed strong restrictions on how and when the U.S. military may be used on American soil, the language of this bill supersedes Posse Comitatus, empowering the president to unilaterally impose martial law at any time of his choosing. This legislation signals the end of the rule of law in America.

Even the slight glimmer of hope that this march towards martial law might be thwarted was quickly extinguished by a Congress that broke its partisan gridlock long enough to overwhelmingly defeat efforts by Senators Mark Udall and Diane Feinstein to lessen the law’s damage. Udall’s proposal to strike the provision allowing for those suspected of terrorism to be held indefinitely was struck down 61-37, while Feinstein’s stipulation that the provision apply only to non-Americans captured "abroad" was shot down 55-45. It’s particularly telling that two such seemingly disparate groups of politicians — ostensibly liberal Democrats concerned with the rule of law and ostensibly conservative Republicans concerned with shrinking government — who spent two months disagreeing about whether or not to raise America’s debt ceiling, an ultimately arbitrary and unimportant decision, took less than a week to find consensus on upending the rule of law and radically extending the government’s power.

The fact that our elected representatives — public servants entrusted with acting in our best interests — are putting forth legislation which endangers the right to due process, a founding principle of this nation, is alarming, but perhaps not all that surprising. We have witnessed the pieces being put into place for years now with little outcry from the American people. The perpetual war on terror has provided those in power with the perfect means by which to ratchet up the fear, all the while slowly eroding our freedoms.

I have yet to see any credible rationale for the presence of these martial law provisions in the defense bill. After all, existing laws and government procedures already address all contingencies for handling any actual enemies of the United States. Even the courts have helped to reinforce these ongoing breaches, ruling that it’s a prerogative of the president, not the judiciary, to determine how enemies of the United States will be treated in custody and what type of trial they will receive, if any. Moreover, we have not seen a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Yet with America pulling out of Iraq at the end of the year, and slowly ratcheting down its commitment to Afghanistan, the military-industrial complex that feeds off of war is increasingly making its presence felt on American soil.

In fact, Congress is only too willing to sell us to the highest bidder, and they are doing it using the same rhetoric they trotted out to justify past debacles such as the invasion of Iraq, the use of waterboarding against detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the installation of possibly cancer-causing body scanners in American airports, and the authorization of government agencies spying on Americans.

Is there any hope of thwarting this legislation? In light of the fact that the defense bill, which has passed the Senate, must still be reconciled with the House of Representatives’ version, it is possible that the offending provisions could be deleted. The Obama administration has also suggested that the president might veto the bill in its entirety. Yet Obama’s veto threat doesn’t actually stem from a concern for the rule of law so much as it has to do with his attempt to amass greater presidential powers.

The situation presents us with something of a catch-22. If the bill is signed into law as it currently exists, anyone (including Americans) in any part of the world (including the United States) who is "suspected" of terrorism may be detained indefinitely and without trial by the United States military. If the bill is altered so as to remove these provisions, this will still probably occur, as the executive branch has, in the years since 9/11, carved out broad, overreaching, and unconstitutional powers for itself when it comes to pursuing military and police actions against perceived enemies. A case in point is the government-sanctioned assassination of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, buttressed by the fact that two of Obama’s top lawyers have publicly stated that any U.S. citizen allied with al-Qaeda is a legitimate military target.

Thus, while the passage of this defense bill would be the final nail in the coffin for the rule of law in America, for all intents and purposes, the rule of law is already on life support. Of all of the egregious actions of the United States government in the past decade, this may be the most outrageous. That our lawmakers, sworn to uphold the Constitution, would even consider voting on a provision that completely eviscerates the rule of law is appalling. Unfortunately, this is the state of our government, a government that has been allowed to run wild since 9/11.

As we ratchet down the wars abroad, we must call upon our leaders to shore up the rule of law and civil liberties at home. There is absolutely no excuse for the continued abuse of power that we as a nation have endured for so long.

02 December 2011

01 December 2011

A terrifying bill that will turn the US into a battlefield with dire effects for Americans has snuck into the Senate, and as lawmakers rush legislation through Congress, the nightmare National Defense Authorization Act is close to becoming a law.

Bipartisan support has allowed for the National Defense Authorization Act to quickly go through Congress, and while opponents of a particular amendment attempt to strike the bill from becoming a law, trickery on the Senate floor is keeping the Act on its way to approval. If a Senate vote this week passes, Section 1031 of the legislation would turn America into a “battlefield,” says supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina.), and everyday citizens could be indefinitely detained by the military and held without charge.

An amendment to the act proposed by Colorado Senator Mark Udall was shot down via vote on Tuesday, and on Wednesday lawmakers moved to limit debate on legislation. A vote could now come as early as Thursday of this week. Should the Senate follow through as did the House, only the president of the United States of America himself could save his citizens from military rule.

President Barack Obama has vowed to veto the legislation should it make it all the way to the oval office, but with support waning for the commander-in-chief, a Republican could usurp Obama within a year and pass the bill into law. The defense bill, with a price tag of $662 billion, is actually substantially more affordable than what Obama had asked Congress to come up with. Given the country’s dire economic condition and the president’s plea to the public that he can save the country, pinching pennies by way of approving the National Defense Authorization Act could be more than likely for the Obama.

“He has said he will. Whether he will is a difficult question because, politically, it’s difficult to veto a defense spending bill that [is] 680 pages long and includes authorization to spend on a whole range of military programs,” Daphne Eviatar, senior associate of Human Rights First’s Law and Security Program, adds to Democracy Now.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has attempted to propose an amendment that would explicitly remove Section 1031 right off the bill, but with lawmakers agreeing 88-12 today to hurry through legislation, his counter-clause is likely to never be brought up. The result? An amendment that gives the government the ability to imprison Americans without charge, indefinitely, that Republican Congressman Justin Amash has called “one of the most anti-liberty pieces of legislation of our lifetime.”

Goodbye, state detention centers and holding cells in cities far and wide. The National Defense Authorization Act stands to send Americans — guilty or not — all the way to Guantanamo. Ready your orange get-up and pray the president follows through with his promise to sink the bill, lest you want the US military to be the one doing the sinking on you. As RT reported earlier today, Congress is also on the move to legalize torture techniques, a ruling that will welcome waterboarding back into the repertoire at Gitmo.